February Insights from Newzoo’s PC Game Tracker: Fortnite Forges Ahead of PUBG to Become 4th Most Played Title

For February’s deep dive into our PC Game Tracker, we took a look at Epic Games’ Fortnite and its increasing popularity. According to our PC Game Tracker, based on data from 42 countries, Fortnite was the fourth most popular title in February, with 16.3% of core PC gamers playing it. This places it ahead of fellow battle royale titan PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS (PUBG) which was at #5 with 14.6%. Fortnite also gained rapid popularity among streamers and their fans. Our Game Streaming Tracker shows that, when excluding esports viewership, Fortnite was the most watched game on Twitch and YouTube Gaming combined in February.

This post explores how updates and game content brought Fortnite to the front line in February and examines in which countries the game is performing best.

RETENTION RATES INCREASE FOLLOWING NEW CONTENT RELEASES

Diving into the PC Game Tracker, we can see that Fortnite’s retention has been growing alongside its player base. In February, 14% of its players had played the title for at least 28 days, up from 8% in December. The amount of content that Fortnite puts out is likely one big reason behind this. For example, it released four patches in February, including a Valentine’s Day event complete with skins, new weapons, such as the crossbow and minigun, and improved building possibilities.

PUBG’s recent updates have been focused on improving and rolling out its anti-cheating measures, which included disabling Steam Family Sharing and blocking programs that could give players an edge or resemble cheat applications. It also added two new crates and tweaked its crate system. This wasn’t enough to increase retention rates, which fell very slightly from 13% in December to 12% in February.

This trend is also reflected when looking at churn for the two titles. Of the American gamers who stopped playing PUBG in February (and had played it in the previous two months), 29.7% went on to play Fortnite instead. On the other hand, only 24.3% of gamers in the U.S. who stopped playing Fortnite switched over to PUBG. In February, it was also announced that Fortnite surpassed PUBG when it came to the number of concurrent players, resulting in a strain on its servers. It will be interesting to see how this develops following the announcement that Fortnite will be coming to mobile and include cross-play with consoles and PCs that run the game.

FORTNITE IS BIG IN EUROPE; PUBG IS MOST POPULAR IN ASIA

When comparing Fortnite and PUBG, it’s interesting to look at the audience that each game attracts. PUBG tends to attract core gamers with its more realistic aesthetics and serious nature. Meanwhile, Fortnite has a more casual and almost cartoon-like look and more simplified gameplay. It also has a smaller map and arsenal of weapons and items compared to PUBG. This, combined with the fact that Fortnite’s battle royale is free to play, lowers the barrier to entry for players wishing to “just give it a try” and for players who want to play a less complicated game.

Fortnite also got more exposure on streaming platforms in February. Our Game Streaming Tracker shows that, when excluding esports viewership, Fortnite was the most watched game on Twitch and YouTube Gaming combined with 83.3 million hours. This is 21.6 million more hours than in January.

There is also a clear difference in popularity per country. Our PC Game Tracker shows that Fortnite was most popular in European and Middle Eastern countries in February while PUBG performed best in Asian countries, as well as some European countries. PUBG is most popular in China with a huge 52% of core PC gamers there playing the title in February (versus just 1% playing Fortnite), followed by South Korea and Hong Kong. France is the top performing country for Fortnite with a player base of 29% versus 8% for PUBG.

MOST PLAYED CORE PC GAMES IN FEBRUARY

Looking at our Most Played Core PC Games Ranking, which is based on unique sessions in North America and Europe, Fortnite was the shining star, moving up three spots to secure #4. This pushed down CS:GO, PUBG, and World of Warcraft down one spot each. Grand Theft Auto V and ARK: Survival Evolved both dropped two spots to #13 and #16, respectively. It’s worth noting that GTA5 had a sale on Steam mid-February and surpassed 90 million copies sold since its inception. Warframe returned to the ranking at #20, most likely pulling players back in with its Prime Vault Unsealed event, which brought back Prime Warframes and packs for players to enjoy. Warframe also issued the Shrine of Eidolon, the update to its open-world area Plains of Eidolon.

THE PC GAME TRACKER

Newzoo’s PC Game Tracker offers an in-depth monthly overview of more than 3,000 games and 100 publishers across 42 countries. The tracker allows clients to easily identify and track the key markets for each game, publisher, and genre, and to gain a deep understanding of player behavior with metrics such as play time, session time, and cross-over engagement/churn with other games. The data is derived from Overwolf’s user base of 12 million PC gaming enthusiasts and can be easily sliced and diced in multiple ways using our new Tableau-powered dashboard.

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